FFA News

Evolution in the Investor Bases of Private Market Funds

Published July 13, 2026

Mention shifting investor bases in private market funds and most will assume you’re talking about alternative asset managers’ focus on targeting private wealth investors. But while this is significant, it is certainly not the whole story. Other trends are also emerging, such as a renewed focus on GP’s commitment levels and the growth of secondaries strategies. Each raises unique considerations for lenders.

Contributing Authors:

Charlie Bischoff

Partner, Head of Finance Travers Smith LLP

Charles Bischoff is a partner and Head of the Finance Group at Travers Smith, specialising in fund finance and specialty finance. He advises some of the most active participants in the fund finance space on the full spectrum of products, in particular investor call bridge/subscription facilities, NAV and hybrid facilities, GP support/co-invest facilities, and equity commitment-backed facilities to funds, GPs, managers and investors across a range of asset classes. Charles is an internationally recognised name in the fund finance space and is a regular speaker and author on the topic. Charles is ranked in Fund Finance by Chambers and Partners UK 2025.

Partner, Head of Finance Travers Smith LLP

Parin Avari

Senior Director RBS International

Spencer Goss

Senior Director NatWest

Georgina McCreadie

Director Deloitte

Shelley Morrison

Head of Private Credit and Fund Finance Aberdeen Investments

Shelley Morrison leads the strategy for fund finance at Aberdeen. She has extensive experience in the origination, structuring and execution of fund level debt facilities across multiple asset classes. She has been with abrdn since 2019. Before joining abrdn, Shelley was a Director in the Fund Finance team at RBS for 6 years where she managed a portfolio of global funds relationships across Private Equity, Private Debt, Infrastructure and Real estate. Prior to that, she worked in structured asset finance at RBS and Lloyds for 10 years, with a focus on commercial ship finance. Shelley holds the both the IMC and CISI certificate in Corporate Finance and is a candidate for the CFA Certificate in ESG Investing. Shelley sits on the Fund Finance Association EMEA Executive Committee. Shelley received a first class MA (honours) degree in Geography and an MSc in Social and Political Theory, both from the University of Edinburgh.

Head of Private Credit and Fund Finance Aberdeen Investments

Leon Stephenson

Partner | Head Fund Finance Reed Smith LLP

Leon leads the Reed Smith fund finance team and is based in the London office. Leon works with banks, other financial institutional lenders, managers, general partners and limited partners of funds on specialist fund financing transactions with private equity, secondaries, real estate, direct lending and infrastructure funds. He is also an elected member of the firm’s Executive Committee.

Leon has particular specialist knowledge of NAV/asset-backed and hybrid facilities, secondary funds facilities, capital call facilities, co-investment and GP/manager support facilities and other types of liquidity facilities provided to funds.

Leon is recognized as a “Leading Individual” in Fund Finance by Legal 500 UK 2025 and the team is recognized in Band 1 in Fund Finance by both Legal 500 UK 2025 and Chambers & Partners UK 2025. Leon was also recognized as “Partner of the Year for Banking” at the Client Choice Awards 2017. Leon represents a large proportion of lenders that provide fund financing as well as a number of private equity and other funds on complex fund finance transactions.

Partner | Head Fund Finance Reed Smith LLP

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